A problem with Verizon knocked out the HealthCare.gov website. / Uncredited, AP

by Donovan Slack, USA TODAY

by Donovan Slack, USA TODAY

Republicans were relishing yet another Obamacare embarrassment Saturday after The Washington Post reported that the lead contractor for the federal health care website employs top executives from a troubled tech company responsible for massive failures on other government jobs.

Rory Cooper, communications director for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said that he was not surprised given the track record of the federal procurement system.

"That's one of the reasons we thought this is a bad idea," he said to USA TODAY on Saturday. "It's quite unbelievable to watch President Obama blame the federal bureaucracy for not being able to implement the federal takeover of the health care system."

HealthCare.gov has been plagued with glitches and technical problems, and new figures released by the Obama administration this week showed that only 27,000 Americans have made it all the way through the process to select insurance plans.

The Post reported that the parent of CGI Federal took over the troubled company, American Management Systems (AMS), but kept many of its executives, include the current and past presidents of CGI, its vice president for federal health care and its health IT leader.

AMS' technical failures included a tax system for Fairfax County, Va., and a project for the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which manages the 401(k) accounts of 4.6 million former and current federal employees, the newspaper reported. The company ended up paying $185 million to the state of Mississippi at one point after failing to deliver a new tax system.

"They did not provide us one working piece of software after almost six years,'' former Mississippi revenue commissioner Ed Buelow Jr. told the Post. "There were hundreds of errors. Nothing worked.''

CGI said it delivers 95% of its projects on time and on budget and told the Post that the work AMS executives may have done 10 years ago is not indicative of the work they do today for CGI.